We are all chasing happiness is some form. Be it in the form of money, health, fame, love….We all live with the misconception that happiness can be achieved by possession of the things we hold so dear to our heart. Is that really true??

One of my favorite comedians and actor Jim Carrey rightly said “I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that its not the answer.”

The happiness we seek stems forth from within. Within where your thoughts lay. Within where your feelings rest. Your mind and your heart is the within where true happiness resides.

So why aren’t we happy then? If its that simple, if its right Within us, how come we are all still chasing it..happiness I mean?

It all boils down to ONE single thought.

Ever notice how when something ‘not so happy’ is happening in your life, your heart and mind automatically go to the worse case scenario. That is the root cause of all unhappiness. That single starting point where the negative thinking spiral starts…that’s where we need to nip it in the bud.

Here is ‘HOW to Boost Your Happiness with Positive Thinking’ and nip that negative thinking in the bud :

You and only YOU can boost your happiness by focusing on positive things and reducing your negative thinking. You can do it with practice: Simply, by following a negative thought with a positive one. This practice will help to retrain your habitually negative thought patterns to bring more positive thoughts to your life.

Ratios especially the ratio of positive to negative thoughts is a major factor in our overall happiness. Our brains are constantly monitoring the emotional tone of our thoughts – too many negative thoughts and our brain responds by creating stress and sadness in our body. When we add more positive thoughts, our brain will create relaxation and happiness. By training yourself to follow (or dismiss) negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll improve your positive/negative thought ratio and be happier.

Now, How do you stay motivated to Stay Positive?

After you’re aware of your negative thoughts and feelings and work to counteract them for a few days, they will gradually begin to lessen. You’ll be able to concentrate more on what you want to do without experiencing distracting emotions and stress. This will make you more productive and energetic. And best of all, it will make you happier.

Steps to boost your happiness with Positive thinking:

Step 1 – Start by Listing Happy Thoughts: Start by taking about 15 minutes and list all the happy thoughts you can think of. Just use a piece of paper and make a long list, give it a good 15-30 minutes. List people and places that make you happy – good friends, favorite vacation spots, childhood memories and more. List things that make you happy – puppies, babies, the smell of a new car, a favorite dinner, a day off relaxing by a pool. List(happy list) anything and everything you can think of that makes you happy.

Step 2 – Awareness of Negative Thoughts & Feelings: Just for this week, commit to pay attention to your thoughts. Whenever you catch yourself thinking about or feeling anything negative, sad or stressful, label that thought “unhappy.” Don’t worry if you have a lot of unhappy thoughts and feelings throughout the day, that is perfectly normal. Just pay attention and label them.

Step 3 – Instantly Follow With a Happy Item:After you label an unhappy thought or feeling, follow it immediately with a happy item from your Happy List. You might pick one item to use all day long, or choose different ones each time you need them. Just bring that happy thing to mind for a second or two.

Step 4 – Smile SO much: Whenever a negative thoughts comes up, replace it with a happy item from the list, but don’t forget to smile while doing so. A smile makes your mind calmer and every negative thought seem less stressful.

Step 5 – Make your personal Commitment to think positive: Positively Affirm everyday(especially when those negative thoughts and feelings strike) by saying this to yourself : I will flip my negative/stressful thoughts and feelings and follow them with a happy thought.

Some special tips:

Please don’t judge yourself. We all have lots of unhappy and negative thoughts throughout the day. As you become more aware of them you might feel embarrassed or ashamed about how many you have. Don’t worry, it is perfectly normal to have all sorts of strange thoughts – we usually don’t pay so much attention to them.

Force a smile on your face as you bring your happy thought to your mind. This will help erase the effects of the negative thoughts.

As a few days pass, the vast number of negative thoughts and feelings often decrease. As if the brain gets bored being negative, because you replace the thoughts so quickly(and happily) with positive ones.

Make sure to remind yourself to do this task throughout the day. Don’t let a day go by without engaging with your negative thoughts and substituting positive ones.

Add to this Positive Thinking Skill

Will you be waiting for negative thoughts to come along to think something positive? Add to this skill by making a conscious and planned effort to think positive thoughts throughout the day. Decide that you will think only positive thoughts for your entire lunch hour or during one of your breaks. Decide that you will only think positive thoughts while driving in your car or while riding the train/bus. Create times in your day when you will be “positive only”. This will give you even more practice at being positive and happy.

My question to you: How do YOU boost your happiness on a daily basis? Have you tried thinking positively on a conscious level everyday? Share your thoughts, questions and wisdom in the comments below. I’d love to read what you think.

Hi Zeenat, An interesting and useful post on how to keep a more positive attitude. And yet, I’m surprised that you didn’t mention meaning. Even positive psychology is acknowledging that deeper, lasting happiness comes not from chasing happiness, but from creating lives of meaning that align with our deepest values and dreams. Blessings, Brad

The fact that you opened this post with the Gandhi quote and the Carrey quote (liked a lot) gives evidence to a ‘greater meaning’ to your post regards to how to boost one’s happiness. Without being patronizing I want to offer this portion of Martin Luther Kings ‘I Have a Dream’ speech:

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

…consider being positive during a Peace March at this time in America?
…consider being positive during The Salt Satyagraha?

Lastly the Jim Carrey quote brings to mind this quote from Simone Weil…who actually had a happy positive presence about herself with people despite her depth of genius. She participated in The Spanish Civil War and worked with Intelligence in England during WWll:

“All pleasure-seeking is the search for an artificial paradise, an intoxication, an enlargement. But it gives us nothing except the experience that it is vain.”

So, what I concur with you is that by practicing your steps, we are given the means to procure a higher means of moral value and strength for the betterment of the world.

Good stuff Zeenat! what I love about it is that a reader can take just one strategy that you’ve offered, be diligent about working on it and then seeing how quickly you can change negative thinking to positive thinking. Thanks xoo-Fran

I love this article, I’ve been working on a more positive outlook and some of the things you pointed out really do help. Especially thinking about happy things after a negative thought. My go to is how I feel when I’m running and flowers. I love running and I love stopping and smelling the flowers I find on my runs. They are like little gems in my otherwise not so pretty neighborhood. I live in AZ and the part I’m in has a lot of brown and not a lot of green anything lol!

Hi Zeenat,
I like your options and have been employing much of what you recommend.

As a traumatized person healing from PTSD and experiencing flashbacks that produce negative thoughts and feelings I want to thank you for including this:

“Please don’t judge yourself. We all have lots of unhappy and negative thoughts throughout the day. As you become more aware of them you might feel embarrassed or ashamed about how many you have. Don’t worry, it is perfectly normal to have all sorts of strange thoughts – we usually don’t pay so much attention to them.”

In Sanskrit, the word for intention is Sankalpa, and it’s a representation of a desire or positive thought that you want to manifest, a promise you make to yourself. I blogged this in my blogging tips blog http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/04/24/blogging-yoga-style/ and I apply setting and refreshing my intention throughout my whole life.

I set my intention to think positively and enjoy every moment of the day each morning. In particular I focus on step 2. and 3. From time to time throughout the day I check in with myself to see if I am on course. When I’m not I make an immediate adjustment by refreshing my intention, smiling and doing something that’s inclined to give rise to happiness. At the end of the day I record any things that evoked happiness that are not on my happiness list. Then I congratulate myself for doing well and express my gratitude for all the good people and good things in my life before I sleep.

Something interesting that’s been happening to me now and then these last two month as a result of self hypnosis of sorts ie. visualizing myself in happy states for just a five minutes or so before I go to sleep and suggesting to myself that I’m going to dream happy dreams. Though I’m not aware of every dream I dream and no one is I have kept dream journals for years. The good news is I’m dreaming dreams wherein I am smiling, laughing, dancing singing and hugging people a couple of time each week now.

Dear Darlings,
Thank you for your marvelous comments here. I have been having one of those super busy weeks and hence haven’t been able to respond to the comments on this post. All the time I get between meetings, sessions and talks, I spend with my little girl🙂 Will be back to normal in the coming week.
Please know that I have read and loved every comment here. I thank you for enriching this post with your thoughts.
Till the next post then…
Much love~

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